Damn, I just realized that I didn't refer to New Orleans as "the Big Easy" once the whole time I was there. I totally should have done that, because it sounds really stupid.

When I arrived at the New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport [awesome name, but someone explain to me why the abbreviation is MSY -- a former name?], one hour late, ScareCrow and Marissa and Ben were there to greet me. ScareCrow was wearing his red Homestar star T-shirt, and he's still eleven feet tall, so he was easy to spot. Marissa was the only one I hadn't met before. Man is she cute.

Kevin drove us back to Katie's (one outcome of the trip is that I no longer think of people as their usernames) house. Whichever committee or whathaveyou decided to proclaim New Orleans the home of the Second Worst Roads in the Nation (Boston is apparently first) deserves a prize for rightness. Holy crap. But they don't have construction all over the place, which I guess makes sense. That's how stuff like that works. Crappy roads, or half-closed roads. Those are your options. Take your pick. One or the other. Either or. Am I running this thing into the ground? The ridiculously potholed, unevenly asphalted ground?

We stopped at Kevin's place, where I would be staying, for me to drop off my things and change into flip flops. [This fact will also become important later.] Man, I got to stay at Kevin's place all by myself the whole time! That's like having my own hotel room for free! Except it had a kitchen AND a Kevin who came over and made breakfast every morning! What luxury!

Katie and Marissa live right around the corner from Kevin in a big ol' house with supertall ceilings. Katie's room is HUGE and has a balcony and a cool purple couch and concrete fruit and a Jolly Roger and a Mister Bojangles and Marissa lives in the upstairs room so the ceiling is slanty and she has stuff all over the walls and ceilings and she's painted everything, like furniture and her keyboard and whatnot and I said it would be a great room to smoke in because it would, and she had signed stuff from people, like my future husband Bus-A-Bus, and her future husband, Jimmy Fallon. Maybe we'll have a double wedding.

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i don't know how i came across this, but i thought i'd fill you in on the MSY secret.... before new orleans/louis armstrong international airport was built, nola's biggest airport was moisant field/moisant stock yards in new orleans east; about 20 miles northeast of the central business district. when nola international was built, they kept the MSY destination abbreviation. whether it was because of laziness or nostalgia or what i'll probably never know. but it always used to weird me out when i lived there.